In order to strengthen state-level efforts across the country, the education reform organizations StudentsFirst and 50-State Campaign for Achievement Now (better known as 50CAN) are merging, 50CAN will announce today. The new group will be known as 50CAN, but StudentsFirst state chapters will retain their names (except in Pennsylvania, where their work overlapped). While both organizations...

Time magazine is in hot water with United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA) and other teacher unions over what they say is an unfair and misleading cover. On its Facebook page, UTLA posted a link to the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) online petition that calls for Time to “apologize to America’s teachers for the misleading and...

Ellie Herman is a writer and English teacher, who taught Drama, Advanced Drama, Creative Writing, English 11 and 9th grade composition at Animo Pat Brown Charter High School in south Los Angeles. A career union member, she is now immersed in a year-long journey, spending time in teachers’ classrooms at schools across the socioeconomic spectrum...

In a sign of its growing presence in California, StudentsFirst, the nationwide education reform organization headed by Michelle Rhee, announced today the hiring of Jovan Agee as the organization’s California State Director. Agee, who served eight years as the director of political and legislative affairs of UDW/AFSCME Local 3930, a homecare providers union, will be...

Michelle Rhee, the former Chancellor of Washington, D.C. public schools and a lightning rod for education reform, played to her audience of LA area teachers during a panel discussion last night at the Los Angeles Central Library, telling them that teachers need to be part of any debate about reform. “I definitely think that teachers...

A panel of education reformers, including StudentsFirst founder Michelle Rhee, is holding a town hall meeting later today in Los Angeles, where they will take questions from an audience of area educators. As the first of three such events around the country this month, the session is billed as a chance to set aside polarizing...